Saturday, January 12, 2008

For British readers only, plus a question

In recognition of my city's deliciously named new mayor, I will from time to time reprint headlines from the newspaper for which I work. Today's selection is from a story about his inauguration:

Nutter's New Beginning

Readers:What are your favorite crime-fiction character names, even if they're not as good as that of Philadelphia's real-life Mayor Nutter? Or, if you're feeling especially creative, British readers, compose the first paragraph of a story to go with that headline.

Peter, we've had Nutters here in Oz too!. One was Archbishop of Adelaide (http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A120219b.htm) where he had a lot of conflict with Canon Wise.The other Nutter of note was the Anglican minister at Yankalilla who discerned the outline of the Madonna and Child in the bubbled paint on the walls of his church, and thereby drew tourists to the sleep little town from far and wide(http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/ReligYankalilla61.htm)

Oh, very good! It is reassuring to know that Philadelphia is not the only place where a nutter is in charge.

What's especially amusing about our Nutter is that as a member of City Council, he was intellectual, earnest, hard-working and serious. Little did he know that most of the rest of the English-speaking world was snickering at his name.

We now have in the UK a Chancellor of the Exchequer called Darling! The Dean of my old dental school was also called Darling.[by name not by nature] His foremnames were Arthur and Ivan or Ivan the Terrible as I seem to remember calling him, among other things.

But I think I prefer my politicians to be named Nutter than to be nutters, or nuts!

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About Me

This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly.
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